‘You never know who you might need to bribe when you get there, William. And I’ve hired a guide and interpreter to meet you at the further end. A former Ambassador gave me his name. The fellow is a retired journalist by the name of Bailey Richard Bailey. He’s married to an Italian and knows the place like the back of his hand.’
McKenzie hoped his old mother did not where he was going. For she belonged to an extreme Presbyterian sect which believed that the Catholic Church was the kingdom of the Devil and the Pope the permanent reincarnation of Satan. The minister in their local church was a man who prided himself on his physical resemblance to John Knox, the great Calvinist divine of sixteenth-century Edinburgh. Indeed, the minister had bought every single book ever published about Knox so he could imitate his mannerisms and recreate the patterns of his speech. How often had McKenzie sat there in his pew beside his mother, his mind miles away, while the man preached on and on about the Anti-Christ in the Vatican and the evils of the Church of Rome, its coffers bloated by the sale of indulgences and pardons, its members denied the basic rights of the study of the Bible and damned to all eternity by their idolatry and the worship of graven images. McKenzie had told Powerscourt in India once that he had learned patience by sitting through these terrible sermons, so filled with hate in the name of the love of God.
He remembered Powerscourt’s last words to him in the drawing room at Markham Square. ‘William, it is important that you find out as much as you can. But it is even more important that you do not get caught. I dread to think what might happen if these people suspect they are being followed, their affairs investigated. I cannot emphasize that enough.’
Outside, McKenzie saw that the great clock on the station platform had almost reached eleven o’clock. The last trunks and hatboxes were being loaded into the goods van, the porters throwing the late ones in before the train departed. McKenzie checked his ticket once more. London, Calais, Paris, Lyon, Mont Cenis, Turin, Pisa, Rome. The whistles blew, the green flags came down and the train moved slowly out of the station, a few relatives and friends waving at the carriages as they passed. William McKenzie was on his way to the Eternal City.
After his journey back to the West Country Powerscourt suspected he might be on the verge of solving one of the riddles of Compton. It was the one where he had started all those weeks before. If he had to, he could now arrange for the exhumation of the body of John Eustace, interred with such speed and secrecy in the graveyard behind his house. But, if he was lucky, that might not be necessary. His first port of call the following day was with Chief Inspector Yates. He showed him the papers he had brought from London.
‘Chief Inspector, thank you for the papers about the exhumation order on John Eustace. I have the Home Secretary’s signature here. I think I am going to have one last attempt on Dr Blackstaff. But I need some ammunition. If the coffin is lifted and opened up, and we discover that Eustace did not die of natural causes, where does that leave the doctor?’
‘Well,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘we could charge him with murder straight away, if you like. He did stand to make a great deal of money out of the will after all.’
‘I’m not sure that it would be easy to secure a conviction on those grounds. And a local jury would certainly be very reluctant to convict him. He’s a very good doctor, I believe. Is there anything else you could charge him with?’
Chief Inspector Yates scratched his head. ‘Obstruction of justice,’ he said, ‘concealing the manner of death, lying to the police forces? We could certainly rustle up something along those lines.’
Powerscourt found Lady Lucy sitting in the garden of Fairfield Park, watching the children throwing a ball to each other. He kissed her and smiled as she ran her fingers through his hair.
‘I think we’re making progress, Lucy,’ he said. ‘But the answers I am finding are so incredible I wonder if I am going out of my mind. I don’t want to tell anybody yet, in case I’m completely wrong.’
‘Surely you can tell me, Francis?’ said Lady Lucy. A pair of sad blue eyes looked up at him. ‘We’ve been married for years and years now, after all.’
Powerscourt kissed her again. ‘I think this knowledge is very dangerous, my love. Believe me, I will tell you as soon as I can. Now, what has been happening down here?’
Lady Lucy told him about her strange encounter with the choirmaster, his comments about the amount of work the choir had to do for the Messiah and the commemoration service. She told him about Johnny Fitzgerald’s discovery of one of the canons of the cathedral celebrating Mass at seven thirty in the morning in the little church at Ledbury St John. Two of them Catholic for certain, Powerscourt said to himself, Archdeacon and Canon, maybe two more. At that point Powerscourt rose from his garden chair and walked round the garden three times, collecting his children in his arms as he went so that three Powerscourts returned to join Lady Lucy on her chair.
‘I must go now, or I shall be late,’ he said, kissing all three of them in turn.
‘Where are you going, Papa?’ said Thomas and Olivia in unison, worried that he might disappear abroad again.
‘I have to go and see Dr Blackstaff,’ he said. ‘I’m rather worried about my health.’ As Lady Lucy watched him go out of the garden gate, she didn’t think for one moment that it was his own health he was going to discuss, but the death that had brought them to Compton all those weeks before.
On his short journey to the Blackstaff residence Powerscourt thought about many things. He thought of the two dead bodies, one roasted all night on the spit in Vicars Hall, the other cut into pieces and distributed around the countryside. He thought about the extra music the choir were learning for the service commemorating one thousand years of the minster. He thought of the Archdeacon, travelling every Thursday to celebrate Mass at Melbury Clinton, his other religious identity concealed inside his bag. He thought of the dinner at Trinity College Oxford all those years before, the candles burning brightly along the tables, the dons resplendent in their gowns of scarlet and black, the long shadows of the servants on the walls as they moved up and down to serve the different courses, the red wine gleaming in front of Newman, his white hair shimmering like a beacon in the centre of High Table.
The daffodils in Dr Blackstaff’s garden were swaying slightly in the early evening breeze as Powerscourt rang the bell at precisely six o’clock. He had sent word to the doctor from London that he proposed to call on him at this time. He was shown into the drawing room lined with medical prints where he had talked to the doctor about the death of John Eustace in January. He greeted the grisly portrait of an eighteenth-century tooth extraction like an old friend. He was, after all, he reflected, about to embark on a different kind of extraction. The truth might be more painful than an infected upper molar.
‘Dr Blackstaff,’ Powerscourt began, as he was ushered into a high-backed leather chair by the fireplace, ‘please forgive me for troubling you once more about the death of John Eustace.’
Dr Blackstaff looked slightly irritated. ‘I have already told you, Lord Powerscourt, all that I know about the death of my friend.’
‘But have you?’ said Powerscourt. ‘That is the question, Dr Blackstaff. You see, I’m afraid I didn’t believe the story you related about the manner of John Eustace’s death the first time you told me, here in this room, all those weeks ago. I still don’t believe it today. There are too many discrepancies in the account you gave me and what the butler said. You said, if I recall, that he was wearing a pale blue shirt. Andrew McKenna said it was grey. Maybe people could confuse one with the other. Perhaps. You said he was wearing black boots. McKenna said they were brown. But, you see, it wasn’t just those variations that made me doubt you were telling me the whole truth. The demeanour of the two of you was most unsatisfactory. Not to put too fine a point on it, you sounded as though you were lying some of the time, the unfortunate butler, one of the worst liars I have ever come across, sounded as though he was lying almost all of the time.’